Ghost In The Machine (It's Only Me)
by Azdoine
Summary: "We can start by considering the much-discussed case of the man who, like an amoeba, divides."
1. Chapter 1

There were, all in all, two things that happened to Danny:

The first Incident (as his unconscious mind dubbed it, with a capital I) was that he had been caught in the Ghost Portal as it turned on, and become a half-ghost. It was hardly the brightest moment of his life — in fact, it was one of the worst, the absolute most miserable instant of pain he had ever known.

But, hey, it wasn't longer than a dozen seconds, and now he was a half-ghost. He'd obviously gotten better, and then some, because even if he was dead, he _was_ also alive.

The _second_ Incident was that he had gone through the Fenton Ghost Catcher, and been separated into two versions of himself. That also hadn't taken longer or lasted longer than a dozen seconds, and it was, the more he thought about it, even more horrifying than becoming a half-ghost.

Because it implied that maybe he had been _divided_ by the portal, rather than _transformed_.

He had come out of the Ghost Portal intangible, falling through floors every few minutes, but he was still all in one piece and one place. He flew through the Ghost Catcher on accident, and he came out as _two different people_.

How on earth had that happened? It was strange enough, being electrocuted, irradiated, and dosed with toxic ectoplasm, before walking away better than ever. It was even _stranger_ , walking through a two-dimensional strainer and being harmlessly spooled apart into multiple independent versions of himself, rather than getting cut to ribbons on the lines of the ecto-wire in the Ghost Catcher.

And maybe that wasn't even what really worried him. He had come apart into a human half and a ghost half for all of a dozen seconds, and for that span of time, he remembered being his human half, staring up in a daze at the loss of his ghost powers. He remembered being human, looking up at his ghost half, and watching as his ghost half re-entered him and merged with him.

 _But he didn't remember being his ghost half at all_.

And there were a few different things that might mean.

If he had been one person, then became two people, then became one person again… it _seemed_ that he could still only _remember_ being one person at a time. Whatever he had thought, finding himself as his ghost half, that was lost to him. If he split and reunited again, his ghost half might always be under the sword of Damocles, awaiting amnesia.

He didn't like the thought of that very much.

If things were even hazier than that, well… he remembered being his human half, and he didn't remember being his ghost half. The _obvious_ assumption was that he — Danny, the person who was sitting down on the couch of his living room and thinking about all of this, right now — was _still_ only the human half. He was the human half, but he had ghost powers somehow, while his ghost half was… still separate from him? But not separate, because they were in one body again?

Danny didn't like the thought of that, either, because it was bizarre and confusing.

But he couldn't have it both ways, could he? Either he was always going to have a hard time remembering things after dividing and coming together (in which case he would have to zealously stay all in one body), or there was someone who _did_ remember being his ghost half, and it _wasn't his human half who would remember_.

He couldn't shake the idea that maybe… maybe his ghost half was still in him somewhere. If Danny was the human half, then maybe the ghost half was just sleeping, waiting to come out, or something like that. Maybe the ghost half inside of Danny would remember what Danny could not.

And that thought was what dragged him down to the laboratory in the basement, late at night, when his parents were already asleep, slumbering like logs. He tore through the closets and storage lockers, looking for the Fenton Ghost Catcher — and after almost half an hour of searching, he found it again.

"Well, this is awkward."

Danny's ghost half — _Phantom_ , Danny decided to call him — floated idly in mid-air, turning over and over as if to spit in the face of gravity.

Danny had never actually… seen what he looked like, as Phantom. Sure, he could get a look in the mirror, but you never looked to other people the same way you did to yourself. You presented yourself to the mirror differently compared to how you presented yourself to other people. A different kind of smile, maybe; different tensions and relaxations.

In that respect, perhaps Danny had never actually seen what he looked like _as Danny_. But that wasn't why he had split himself again, not at all.

"Is it awkward?" Danny asked, finding his throat quite dry. "I didn't notice."

Phantom's gaze was perfectly serene, a look that was terrible on him. Then he turned intangible and leapt back into Danny's chest, and a familiar chill swept over Danny, the cold of his subdued ghost powers.

"Hey! I brought you out for a reason!" Danny yelled, much more confidently than he actually felt. Again, he had been divided… but he only remembered being a human, rather than being a human and a ghost. A terrible sense of rising doom was falling over him.

So he activated his powers again and flew through the Fenton Ghost Catcher. Danny fell, and Phantom drifted forward, untouched by gravity.

"Seriously, I'd rather you didn't do that," Phantom said, his voice strained. "It's uncomfortable."

"Uncomfortable," Danny echoed, almost incredulously. If he thought about it, _he_ was uncomfortable, too, without the reassuring cold of his ghost half inside of him. But he also thought that he didn't care, because this was more important. "Why?"

"You wouldn't understand," Phantom said, as desperate as a dispassionate man could be. Danny was struck with a sudden burst of sympathy for Jazz, and for his parents, because he had said much the same in as many words before, and it was utterly _infuriating_ to hear.

"Try me," Danny said. Phantom moved, as if to re-enter Danny yet again, and then stilled. He smiled sadly.

"You know you're smarter than you think you are, Danny," Phantom said, perversely affectionate. Danny felt his spine crawl.

"I'm a C student," Danny pointed out, his voice wavering a little.

"You're busy," Phantom rebuked. "And you don't see the point of school because even without the ghost fighting you're a depressed teenager, and so you can't imagine a future for yourself. But your parents are smart, and I think you got it from them."

"They're smart enough to be really dumb," Danny said. "But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about… and you _can_ talk with me, can't you?"

"Yes," Phantom said flatly.

"You're intelligent enough to understand the words that I'm saying, and to understand what I mean, and… you can reply."

"Are you surprised?" Phantom asked, a little amused, now.

"I… shouldn't be." Danny licked his lips. He thought of his parents, as condescending to ghosts as they were enthralled. They did not think highly of ghosts, or consider the possibility of any particularly intelligent discourse with them.

Danny, of course, disagreed. _He_ was a ghost (aside from times like now), and he expected that he was generally intelligent. And… he _knew_ ghosts. He had spoken to them, and they could communicate, just like Phantom was now.

"But you _are_ surprised," Phantom surmised. "Because you don't expect to ever hold a conversation with a part of yourself, right?"

"I think you have me at a disadvantage," Danny said.

"I do."

"You know a lot about me, don't you?"

"I do."

"That's incredibly creepy."

Phantom laughed, and the laugh was _Danny's_ laugh, behind the echo and static of a ghost's voice box. "Why do you think I said this was _awkward?_ "

"To distract me? I don't know." Danny looked down. "What… what are you?"

"I don't know," Phantom said, his voice so earnest that Danny doubted his own mother could find a lie in it.

"You don't know?" Danny said, doubtful.

"Do I look like a ghost expert?" Phantom asked rhetorically. He glanced down at his own semi-translucent body. "Don't answer that."

"You have to know _something,_ " Danny said. "You have… I don't know, you're a person, right?"

"Uh, _yeah_."

The sense of dismay and doom spiked painfully. "So you have your own idea of yourself? You think of yourself as different from me?"

"Yes," Phantom said.

"Do you… are you able to think, while you're a part of me? Just like I can think, when you're a part of me?"

"...yes," Phantom admitted quietly. Danny felt the bottom drop out of his stomach, and quiet horror turned to adrenaline.

"So why do you want to be a part of me at all!?" Danny yelled. "You could have left and done your own thing as soon as the Ghost Catcher separated us for the first time. Why is it so uncomfortable not to be a part of me?"

"Well, I don't know!" Phantom snapped.

"There has to be more to you than that!" Danny shot back. "You can't just… want to hitch a ride, and nothing else!"

"Why?" Phantom asked scornfully. "Because that's _creepy?_ Do I scare you?"

"Yes! Of course you do!"

"Don't be. If I wanted to do something to you I would have done it already." Phantom shook his head. "Like I said, you don't get it. If I wanted to live your life, you're doing a better job of that than I can."

"My life!? What about _your_ life?"

"My 'life' _is_ your life, Danny. Or did you miss the fact that I'm your ghost half? The part of you that's dead?"

Phantom's words stopped Danny in his tracks. "You… you don't… you can't imagine being anyone other than my dead side? My ghost?"

"No, and why would I?" Phantom laughed. "Does the Box Ghost imagine being someone else's ghost? Do you think he imagines having a life of his own beyond being the ghost of a dead man?"

The absolute matter-of-fact tone was chilling. Danny felt a little sick. "I thought you thought of yourself as… different from me."

"You're alive, and I'm not," Phantom said. "We are different in that sense, even if we're both… the same person, in other respects. But why would I want to carry on where you left off, like the other ghosts carry on for the other dead, when you're already still alive? You carry on just fine for yourself."

"And you're…" Danny swallowed. "you _can't_ be happy like this."

"Why not?"

"If you're me…" Danny trailed off. "Isn't it boring?"

He couldn't imagine anything more horrible than sitting in the back, watching as someone else lived his life for him.

"I don't think I _can_ feel boredom," Phantom said quietly. "There's always something to think about. And, if nothing else, there's never a dull moment, with everything in your life."

Somehow, Danny expected to be disgusted and sad and terrified about Phantom forever. But eventually the two of them had to put themselves back together, because Danny needed to be Danny Phantom, and he allowed himself to forget about his unease.

It was so _weird_ , talking to your doppelganger and listening to hear him as he explained that he wanted nothing more than to do cede his very life to you. Danny saw that Phantom was really just… empty. Empty on every level. But he wasn't _sad_ , not like Danny might have been, in his place.

Sometimes Phantom even seemed happy, something that Danny scarcely understood. But Danny couldn't _argue_ with Phantom's happiness, as he lived his life, and it was probably enough for Phantom to just be happy. It was certainly better than Phantom living as a miserable and jealous ghost.

His Mom and Dad always said that ghosts envied the living, as one of their driving motivations. But maybe you could want what someone else had, without also trying to take it from them for yourself — and maybe you could want what someone else had, while still feeling happy for them.

But all good things had to come to an end, and eventually this good thing did.

* * *

"No," Phantom said. "I won't."

"Why not!? You have all of the time in the world in there, to think and memorize!"

"No," Phantom said once more. "I will _not_. You want me to be your cheat sheet for this test? Where does that end? If I give you the answers, are you gonna ask for more later? Are you going to start asking for me to tell you what to do, to help you make the right decisions?"

"What?" Danny asked. "That's… ridiculous! I know you like to stay in the back!"

"I'm sure you think it's ridiculous," Phantom replied. "But my answer is still no. If I tell you what to do, even for something as petty as this, then you're not living your life — I'm living your life for you, in a petty way. I am _not_ going to wear you like a puppet!"

Danny felt angry, angrier than he had been in a long time. Once he had been afraid of and disturbed by his other self, but familiarity had bred a kind of contempt and disrespect. In that moment, he felt like he was in the same rut he always was, fighting with ghosts who could never really _change_. "Why are you so insufferable!?"

Phantom was silent.

"If you won't help me on the test, then I'll help _myself_."

"Good," Phantom said. "Anything would be better than relying on me."

"I already rely on you," Danny replied, in a snit. "You're my ghost half, my ghost powers!"

Phantom didn't respond. Danny never understood anything at all.


	2. Chapter 2

It had taken fourteen years for Danny to get as far as he had, to build a life worth living. He had many more to go, to keep on going.

But it took less than a second for his life to be over. All over, gone up in a firestorm in a blisteringly-hot moment. The authorities needed to identify the charred corpses of his friends and family by their _dental records_.

And then he was alone, save for Phantom's voice in the back of his mind, barely imagined, which was scarcely any better than being alone for real.

He was alone, and it felt like emptiness.

* * *

It took him two weeks to finally break down, and go to Vlad. Fucking Vlad. He found he hated Vlad so much he wanted to die. His heart hurt so badly he felt as if it was going to stop where it lay and end his life. As if he needed his heart to keep beating in order to stay alive.

He hadn't wanted to do this. He hated the compassionate look on Vlad's face, and on the faces of all the social workers. He had sat invisibly at the side of the Fenton Ghost Portal for hours on hours on hours, waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

He didn't get what he was waiting for, and so with anguished, angry, wet eyes he came to Vlad Masters.

It took him two more weeks to explain what he held in the Fenton Thermos at his side.

"It was Jazz," he said.

"Ah," Vlad said simply.

"'Ah'? Is that really all you have to say?" Danny wanted to be angry with Vlad, but all he could feel was his sad hate hate _hate_. He was burned and guttered out.

"Would you have me pretend I cared about her, Daniel?"

"No," Danny said. "I just… want to understand."

"Tell me what happened," Vlad said, his voice promising _something_.

Danny stared blindly into the fireplace of Vlad's vaulting living room. "She was with _Spectra_. She was with Spectra! She tried…"

She had tried to _hurt_ him.

"Are you surprised?" Vlad asked, light and curious.

"Yes! She was my sister!"

She hadn't _recognized_ him.

"The ghost you encountered wasn't your sister," Vlad said, as gently as he could manage, which wasn't very. Icy hot anger flared in Danny's veins.

"How can you say that?" Danny whispered through his teeth.

"Your sister is dead."

Pain stabbed into his heart, pain pain pain _hurt_. "And now she's a _ghost!_ "

Vlad's condescension swept away his pity and compassion, now. "Hah! You are _such_ a _child!"_ he laughed bitterly.

Danny felt himself transforming into his ghost form without thinking about it.

"Let me tell you a story, Daniel…" Vlad mused. "Once upon a time, a few decades ago, there was a humble dock-worker named Isaac Anders. He was a real family man, as the record shows; with a wife and a daughter and a son, the perfect nuclear family. His union loved him, and he worked hard, for his family, and for his men."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Danny hissed.

"Isaac died with blood in his throat, when a box of cargo tumbled open over him, and he was buried underneath. He died as he was crushed by sheet metal, in lightless dark. His wife grew old and withered and died without him, and his son grew old and died of cancer, and his daughter grew old and had children of her own.

"And then your parents built their Ghost Portal, and you opened it for them, and the ghost of Isaac Anders burst forth. Tell me, Daniel, do you _really_ think that there was anything of that humble, caring family man left in that ghost? Do you _really_ think that if there was anything left of Isaac, he would have run around calling himself the _Box Ghost_ , rather than visiting the grave of his wife and son? Do you think that Isaac would turn up the chance to see his grandchildren, because he was too busy acting out?"

Danny felt very small. There was a tightness in his eyes, trailing down to his throat.

"I'm who I was before I went in the portal," he said. "And I called myself Danny Phantom."

"Don't make me _laugh_." Vlad sneered. "You played at being a superhero because you were fourteen years old and drunk on comic books and bored, and I played at being a supervillain because I was every bit as pathetic as you always thought I was. The Box Ghost acts out the last moments of Anders' life in the manner of a villain because he truly doesn't know how to be anything else. He doesn't remember who Anders was in life, and he doesn't care, because he knows he can't replace Anders, only play out the psychodrama in his head."

"You're wrong," Danny said, desperately, as if he was trying to convince himself. He stared at his thermos.

"All there is for him is a handful of a few dying moments, feeling trapped and breathless and angry and terrified at unfairness," Vlad said. "And, I imagine, all there is for that ghost in your jar is a fragmented copy of a story Jasmine told herself about the unfairness of the world where she would never grow up to be the psychologist she always wanted to be. Or maybe she was worried about what madness would grip you with her death. Or maybe, or maybe… who knows. But we both know that the thing in there is not your sister."

"You sound like my mother," Danny growled. He had never imagined that would become an unflattering comparison. "Jazz is still a person!"

"I suppose," Vlad said. "But she's not the person you were hoping for, is she?"

Danny couldn't look at Vlad.

For a time he had dared to imagine that maybe his life wasn't over. Why was he sad that his family and friends were dead, when he had _known_ that there was an afterlife! For a time, he had imagined that he would be reunited with everyone he had lost, and he wouldn't have to say goodbye to them.

(As if he'd ever had the chance to say goodbye before they were torn away by fire.)

No. He had felt as if he had remembered a back door out of his own private tragedy, but he had _been_ such a _fool_. He had always been such a fool. He should have _known_ that his family was gone. The portal had been open for so long, and there hadn't been even one tearful reunion, only battles and battles and more battles. The eclectic ghosts of the Ghost Zone were happy to make their own families and societies in the dim-lit green, or to linger in loneliness, when they weren't happy to take out their incurable grievances on the real world.

Maybe not all ghosts were evil… but they never engaged with the world the way they did when they were alive.

He should have _known_ that he wouldn't be reunited with the ghosts of his family. And now, in front of his most bitter enemy, he wept. And then he screamed, in heaving breaths.

"Why am I different?" he sobbed.

"We died in ectoplasm," Vlad said with a shrug. "You in one burst, I suppose. Me across weeks of rot. It was enough ectoplasm to make a deeper… impression in our ghosts, and let them form almost instantly."

 _Our ghosts_.

"What does it really mean to be half-ghost?" Danny wanted to ask. But perhaps he already knew, and had known for a while.

A person being overshadowed could use ghost powers… or at least, the ghost overshadowing the victim could use their ghost powers. But there was nothing to make Danny think that it didn't go the other way around, if the overshadowing ghost wasn't actually trying to take control.

An overshadowed object could be manipulated even without working muscles. The faltering heart of a cooling corpse could be pumped and restarted by ectoplasm, rather than a defibrillator. Ghostly healing and shapeshifting could mend the flesh of the overshadowed victim. It normally took so long a time for a ghost to form that it wouldn't matter, but…

 _We died in ectoplasm_.

He walked into a dangerous lab experiment, died, and was overshadowed by his own ghost until his body put itself back together.

Had Phantom done it consciously, trying to save the fading lights in his brain? Had Phantom tried to save Danny out of his own vicarious emptiness, or some sense of compassion? Or had Phantom or done it without thinking, his powers acting autonomically? Did it matter?

Danny screamed, and fired a beam of ectoplasm into the fireplace. It was reduced to coals and ash.

Vlad didn't try very hard to keep him from leaving.


	3. Chapter 3

"We've been stupid," Phantom said. "I've been stupid."

Danny didn't particularly want to listen, but it wasn't as if he really had anything better to do. He wondered if he resented Phantom for saving him.

But it wasn't as if Phantom had really had a choice. He carried all of Danny inside of him, an echo, a light flung. If other ghosts had their obsessions, then Phantom's obsession was Danny. The instrument of Danny, the extension of Danny, the skin, the husk, that which remained.

"Do you think?" Danny asked sarcastically. The green glow of the Ghost Catcher lit up his face. "It's my fault they died. If only I hadn't cheated-"

"If it's your fault, it had nothing to do with your cheating," Phantom said, more harshly and venomously than Danny had ever heard the passive ghost speak before. "You couldn't have even predicted what would happen."

"I could have," Danny said. "I knew the Nasty Burger was volatile. I fought that battle with Skulker there and primed the explosion. Lancer called a meeting there because I was cheating. Jazz and my friends wanted to defend me."

 _As if I deserved their defense_.

"You had no way to anticipate that Lancer would be so stupid as to hold the meeting in the ruins of a building full of hazardous waste," Phantom said bluntly. "You couldn't have known ahead of time.

"On the other hand, you could have known ahead of time that you were leaving your family and friends vulnerable, but you didn't think about it. Because you liked being _special_."

"What!?" Danny asked.

"If you were in the explosion, do you think you would have died, half-ghost? No. Do you think that you are such a freak of nature, with two lab accidents and two half-ghosts, and no fatalities? If you had thought it, you would have made every last person you ever cared about into a half-ghost just like us."

"I wouldn't have killed them," Danny said, disgusted with himself. "Even if they came back as half-ghosts."

"They were going to die anyway, of old age, if nothing else." Phantom said gently. "They were always going to die. No, you didn't even _imagine_ the objections that you're imagining now, though, because you wanted to be special. You _liked_ being a unique half-ghost, a special player in a world of weak humans and unchanging ghosts. Above everything. So you never even considered making more people like you."

Danny wasn't sure that he could deny it. He remembered the complications that came with Tucker's ghost powers, Desiree's brainchild…

Wasn't it so _convenient_ for him that Tucker had to be exorcised in the end? What a perfect happy ending, where everyone knew their places.

God, he missed Tucker so _badly_.

He was such an idiot. Grandstanding. Playing at being a superhero, as if fighting ghosts in one tiny town made a difference, when there were oceans of human history waiting in the ghost zone. When there were billions of people around the world right now, who would live and die without ever meeting a ghost. Danny might have needed to guard the Ghost Portal, but he could have done more.

"Why do you say as much now?" Danny asked, his voice hollow. "I thought you didn't want to tell me what to do with my life?"

"I don't want to tell you what to do," Phantom said. "But I also don't want you to betray yourself any more than you do."

Danny hung his head, weighed down by guilt and shame.

"I think it's not your fault," Phantom continued. "You didn't deserve to lose them for cheating on a test and thinking highly of yourself, no more than Irving Burns deserved to be stuck as a wage slave in a dead-end job because he once failed a test. No more than your friends and family deserved to die for something they hadn't even done."

"I think," Danny said. "That I don't even care anymore. Maybe it's my fault. Maybe it isn't. They're still gone."

He hadn't thought about the possibility of losing them until it was too late. But he was tired of arguing with people about all the awfulness in his life, in the world.

Phantom was suspiciously silent.

"You think you can't bring them back," Phantom said.

"Don't even try to get my hopes up," Danny rasped.

"I don't want to ignore any possibilities," Phantom replied. "We both know there's more than mere death and return in this world. You remember Freakshow's staff."

"That could have been a ghost," Danny said weakly. "An ecto-form."

"A ghost taking the form of an inanimate object?" Phantom rolled the idea over, rolled the words over in his mouth. " _Maybe_. Do you believe that?"

"No," Danny admitted.

"You see the point."

"It's a leap to go from a staff that controls ghosts… magically? To… the possibility of resurrection."

"I never said otherwise."

Danny put his face into his hands. He hated Phantom, for raising the possibility. If there was even the idea of a possibility, he didn't know how he would ever forget it. He didn't know how he could _stop_ looking.

"How likely do you think it is?"

"Danny-"

"How likely!? I know you think, you're always thinking back there, in my head. Come on, tell me what you think!"

"Less than one in ten for sure," Phantom said softly. "Probably less than one in twenty, even accounting for the possibility of ghosts with eclectic powers - like Desiree - who might be able to do it in a true way."

He hated Phantom. He hated himself, for being too weak to go through with it.

"If you could resurrect _them_ , you could resurrect me, too."

Phantom stared at him, unblinking. "No… what are you thinking, Danny?"

"I don't want to live in a world where I'll never see them again," Danny whispered. "I'm not strong enough to look, the way you want me to look. I'm not even strong enough to save people the way they should be saved. I'm a shitty hero. I think… maybe you were always better than me."

He had only ever been meek, human Danny Fenton, playing at being Danny Phantom. Phantom was the hero.

Phantom was Danny Phantom.

"That's not true," Phantom protested. "Danny, please, I'll-"

"You'll let me do what I want," Danny said. "If you don't want me to betray myself then you must understand. Please."

"I don't want to," Phantom croaked.

"But you would thrive where I couldn't," Danny said. "You don't get bored. You're… so far from human, just like every other ghost, even if you are a person. You're a person who is so much more than me."

"What do you want me to _do?_ " Phantom asked.

"Save people. Try to find a way to bring them back. Don't let anything stop you. Be the person I wish I could be, okay? Be the person I would be if I couldn't ever betray myself."

"I will," Phantom said. For the first time, he began to cry.

There was one more thing Danny wanted to ask for, but he felt like that would be too much. Even so, Phantom seemed to know what he wanted.

"It's okay," Phantom said, his hand glowing green. In the ominous light, his expression was unreadable. "It won't hurt."

It didn't.


End file.
